PeerApp is honored to be part of that list, and I’d like to share our insight:

Streaming video is now a fully mainstream activity. Today’s toddlers are watching videos on their parents’ iPhones and grandparents are streaming movies. Content sources continue to proliferate. As video consumption moves to an ‘on demand’ model, viewers retain their quality expectations no matter what device they use to consume the video. This puts huge demands on networks. Beyond video, downloads of software, games, music, photo sharing, and cloud-based storage all add to the network traffic load, of course.

Consumers have more choices than ever for viewing: laptop or tablet, mobile phone, smart TVs, maybe even watches! For the first time ever, in 2013, TV subscriptions decreased as viewers ‘cut the cord’ from traditional PayTV subscription services. Consumers are also increasingly watching long-form video on tablets and mobile devices. According to the Ooyala Global Video Index, tablet users spent 42% of their time and mobile device users spent 25% of their time watching videos longer than 30 minutes.

As we listen to our customers around the globe, it’s clear that there is a growing need for local content delivery to manage service delivery and ensure subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE), which is obviously a key factor in retention and upsell.

Building faster pipes does not always deliver better QoE. And, accepting proprietary caches from a handful of large content distributors is a partial solution that brings its own operational, strategic and potential regulatory challenges.

PeerApp offers an alternative: an open, adaptable and virtualized local content delivery solution that is fully in the operator’s control, yet able to interface easily with global CDNs and other content sources. This option gives mobile, cable and telecom operators the best chance of capitalizing on the Internet content opportunity. Hundreds of customers globally – including many Tier 1 operators – use PeerApp solutions to accelerate content delivery up to 12 times (and more!), reduce network costs by 50% or more, and enable service delivery for better QoE.

You can view the original column and read Streaming Media’s complete “View from the Top 2014” for more insight on the Online Video industry.